May 05, 2005

Curious, George: What exactly is a "hollaback girl"?
posted by Fiona's Apple 18 years ago
  • evidently there is no google where Fiona's Apple lives! :( holla back girl
  • your momma! ;-)
  • Funny this came up on an Ask Metafilter thread a month ago. Is there some hit song going around?
  • Gwen Stefani single.
  • I know it's wrong, but I still hear it as Hollenbeck girl.
  • spam
  • Why is Gwen Stefani so famous? I don't think I've ever heard her or her band, but I know what she looks like. She seems to be all over the place. Why?
  • cuz she's a holla back girl!
  • No, no, she ain't no holla-back girl.
  • She is famous because she gives tremendous handjobs.
  • now let's just ponder that for a moment...
  • Her band has had several hits. If you have listened to top 40 radio even at all in the last decade you have probably heard her or the band she's in. I think pretty much every record they have released has gone platinum. She's also now married to that guy from Bush, so that makes her part of a "power couple." Unlike most other pretty white women singers she does at least write her own lyrics and wasn't given a record deal because she was on a Disney show as a kid. She is also at least somewhat unique in her style. She does, however, need a sammich in the worst way. I'm not that into her or the band she is in, but I don't hate her or her music. I do hate her husband and his music, however.
  • A Curious George from someone who loves pop culture and spent an hour researching some Cornershop lyric! Are you trying to provoke us into a hollaback flameout? Oh nevermind, you must be a Harajuku girl!
  • from fiona's apple's bio: I once spent an hour trying to research what the guy meant when he sang "Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow" this person obviously enjoys pondering lyrics.
  • excuse me, i mean *burp*
  • What does Robert Plant mean when he sings "Squeeze my lemon, 'til the juice runs down my leg"?
  • I think he means "I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree." that lyric actually doesn't make sense. Tree?
  • I believe that the tree is metaphoric for the woman's torso. The metaphoic peaches being rearranged due to the shaking of the metaphoric tree is one of the most popular parts of the television show, "The Man Show."
  • ahhh, right. I was thinking too phallically. Of course, I'm a little twisted. *cough* Carry on.
  • For some unambiguous lyrics, one must only go to Lady Saw. This song is the best example of neener neener fsst! fsst! catty EVER! And it's a pretty good song too.
  • I didn't mean to set something like this off. I honestly thought I was posting an innocent question. I had just been a wallflower here for a while; I guess I picked the wrong question for my debut. Right now I am student teaching Biology in an all girls school, and I asked my class what a "hollaback girl" was, and NONE of them could come up with a difinitve answer. I went to the urban dictionary link above but when you read it, there is no definitive answer either. I thought maybe one of the Monkeys had heard an interview when she explained it. On a side note, does anyone remember when Gwen was "just a girl" with no adjective?
  • she always sucked right? I mean, no doubt sucked. There was no doubt. That's why they were called that. Their real band name was "311 with tits" but since there was so little doubt that they sucked, it just caught on.
  • Ooooh ooh, this my shit, this my shit Let me hear you say this shit is bananas
  • On the urban dictionary there is a citation for "holla back girl" and "hollaback girl" neither of which have a definitive answer.
  • Having read the definitions on urban dictionary and looking at the lyrics, I think that those offering definitions for hollaback girl that do not involve booty calls are misinterpreting the lyrics. That being said, where can I find one of these so called hollaback girls???
  • No one can probably come up with a definitive answer because there probably isn't one! Suffice it to say, the term probably has several connotations that can be loosely interpreted depending on the context/user. Gwen has attempted to hijack Japanese pop culture, posing as this bad-ass harujuku girl who doesn't know squit from squat. That aside, she needs some vocal lessons as well...
  • Just adding my two bits: From Let's Sing It Wikipedia I've tried at least ten search engines, including Yahoo, Google, Ithaki, Surfwax and something totally useless called Homerweb. Never never use Homerweb. It's stupid. And no luck on most of the engines for anything definitive.
  • From Wikipedia's entry: This single is the first pop #1 hit in many, many years.
  • Here's a translation, from a site on American slang for non-English speakers (which incidentally, looks pretty cool).